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Curry of Mutton

A mutton curry made with butter, onions, curry powder, and water, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Curry of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the curry

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter and fry the sliced onions until brown.

  2. Add the water, curry powder, and cold mutton to the skillet.

  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the curry in a border of rice.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Supplies the meat, which becomes tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Onions
Browning them adds sweetness and a deeper savoury base to the curry.
Butter
Fat for frying the onions, carrying flavour and helping them brown.
Curry powder
Provides the spice aroma and flavour that defines the dish.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until brown. Onions that are pale lack depth, while burnt ones taste bitter. Slow, even browning lets sugars caramelise and build savoury flavour that carries through the whole curry.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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